5 Youths Held in Irvine Shooting : Crime: The suspects are charged with conspiring to commit murder in connection with the gang-related incident Thursday near two high schools in which two people were wounded. Police say more arrests likely.

Five teen-agers have been arrested in connection with the gang-related shooting in which two innocent bystanders were wounded in a commercial area near two high schools in Irvine, police said Friday.

The suspects, all from Irvine, were booked on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder, police said. Four of them were not identified because they are juveniles, but Lt. Vic Thies said three are students at Woodbridge High School and one is a student at Irvine High School.

The fifth was identified as Ye Yin, 18, a student at Woodbridge High.

“We expect to be arresting three or four more suspects,” Thies said. “The investigation has been very aggressive, and we’re very pleased with the results. There were a lot of witnesses, and we got many leads from them.”

Thies said all five people arrested so far were taken into custody without incident Thursday night.

“They were arrested at various places--some at their homes, some on the street,” he said.

All were being held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. The juveniles were taken to Juvenile Hall, and Yin to County Jail.

No guns were found in any of the arrests, and none of the weapons fired Thursday have been located yet, Thies said. Police have determined that about three 9-millimeter handguns were used, he said.

The shooting erupted about 1 p.m. Thursday in a parking lot in the 4200 block of Barranca Parkway, near Culver Drive. The lot is next to a Lamppost Pizza. Two young men, who police said were innocent bystanders in the parking lot, were shot and wounded, as a cluster of youths in two cars began shooting into the lot.

The injured were Glenn Edwards, 18, who was shot in the left foot, and Brandon Woodruff, 17, who was shot in the face. Edwards was treated at Irvine Medical Center and released Thursday, and Woodruff was reported in stable condition Friday at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

Police said the shooting incident revolved around a money dispute. A student at S.E.L.F. Alternative School, a continuation school, was allegedly trying to extort money from some other teen-agers, Thies said. The alleged extortionist, who was not identified, actually was the intended victim of the shooting, Thies added.

Thies said the five suspects had called in “an outside gang” to help them in their dispute with the S.E.L.F. student. Thies said those gang members from outside Irvine took part in the shooting, and that it is not clear whether the suspects are members of that gang.

Thies said he could not comment on where the gang is from.

But he acknowledged that gangs are active within Irvine itself, and that gang activity in the city has been gradually increasing in recent years.

David E. Brown, superintendent of the Irvine Unified School District, said Friday that gangs in Irvine are “not a large problem but are a growing concern.” Brown said Irvine is not immune from the rest of Orange County, where gang activity has been increasing and violence escalating.

“We have students, even in Irvine, who are at risk” of joining gangs, Brown said.

He said student attendance at all three Irvine high schools Friday “was normal, or perhaps slightly higher than normal.” He said no problems surfaced on any of the high school campuses, and he noted that police were at the schools “to beef up security.”

Brown said joint meetings likely will be held soon by the Irvine school board, the police and the City Council.

“We’ll probably get together to discuss what may happen in the future--to set boundaries, to do whatever has to be done,” Brown said.

“This problem is much bigger than just within the schools.”